Immanent Transcendence
Reconfiguring Materialism in Continental Philosophy
Description:... Through an engagement with the work of Deleuze, Irigaray and Adorno, this book outlines how the notion of 'immanent transcendence' is variously invoked in continental materialist projects as a means of radicalising the concept of matter, such that it may be viewed as the site of creative transformations (becoming) and irreducible differences. The book highlights notions such as life, sexual difference and historical possibility as figures of immanent transcendence, and considers the way in which these might enable a non-reductive approach to materialism.
Patrice Haynes argues that on closer scrutiny materialist reformulations of transcendence do not yield accounts of immanence that can do justice to material finitude. Indeed, it is maintained that in seeking to ensure the self-determination of immanence, philosophies of immanence unwittingly end up jeopardising material integrity. Haynes suggests that it may be only by appealing to divine transcendence that material immanence can be given in its fullness, thereby pointing the way towards a theological materialism.
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